What We Learned at the WAN-IFRA World News Media Congress 

The WAN-IFRA World News Media Congress is always a fascinating event, but this year was particularly notable for the deep dive into AI’s role in reshaping journalism. We saw not just experiments but real-world applications and compelling insights into how the industry is adapting. Here’s what stood out to us. 

1. Publishers Shift from ‘Experimentation with’ to ‘Implementation of’ AI 

The AI conversation is no longer about “Is this just a gimmick?” or “What could it do?”. As Ezra Eeman, Director of Strategy & Innovation at NPO, expressed in his keynote, AI has become a tool that’s moving from pilot projects to integral parts of newsroom operations. But what does that look like beyond transcription, headline generation, and translation? 

Juan Carlos Lopez Calvet, Director of Data & AI at Schibsted Media, gave a live demo of a tool for turning written articles into videos. You input an article, wait a minute, and AI generates a video complete with voice and captions. Journalists can then tweak the cut, refine the text, and have a polished product in no time. The videos produced are currently on their website and playing on public transit station screens.  

But it’s not just about quick wins; there are big, investigative applications too. Zach Seward, Editorial Director for AI initiatives at the New York Times, shared how his team is using AI to power investigative journalism. The NYT has developed AI-assisted tools that include semantic search, which looks for the meaning behind words rather than just the keywords themselves. This allows journalists to uncover hidden meanings in documents and data. 

2. Will AI Summaries in Google Search Kill Your Traffic? Maybe. But Not Yet. 

AI-generated summaries — or AI Overviews (AIOs) — have started appearing at the top of Google search results. Naturally, publishers are anxious. If Google gives users the answer directly, what’s the incentive to click through to the original article? 

That concern isn’t unfounded. Carly Steven, Director of SEO & Editorial E-commerce at MailOnline, shared that click-through rates dropped by 48 to 56% on articles where AIOs were present. For publishers that depend on traffic to drive revenue, that’s a significant blow. 

But Clara Soteras, Head of Innovation and Digital Strategy at AMIC, offers a counterpoint. She notes that zero-click searches already account for 58.5% of all Google activity. In that context, AIOs aren’t an abrupt disruption but an acceleration of an existing trend. And importantly, she highlights that Google Discover — the personalized feed for Android users — is now driving more news traffic than traditional search in many cases. 

So which is it? A crisis or a continuation? 

Barry Adams, SEO consultant, offers a middle ground. He acknowledges that if you’re ranking first for a keyword and an AIO appears, you can expect around a 30% drop in traffic. But he cautions against overreacting. “We don’t optimize for DuckDuckGo,” he says, “so why are we panicking about ChatGPT?” In his view, while AIOs may change the nature of SEO, they don’t spell doom. In fact, overall Google search usage is still rising in 2024. 

Still, Carly Steven doesn’t dismiss the impact. She sees it as a reason to evolve the strategy. Rather than competing head-on with AI summaries, she suggests pivoting toward brand-inclusive queries — searches that explicitly reference your brand — and investing in high-quality content that offers more than a machine-generated blurb ever could. 

This reflects an overall trend back towards branding. Bartosz Hojka, CEO of Agora Media, reminded us of the enduring power of brands: “Brands are the rail guards against an unpredictable future.” At last year’s Digital Growth Summit, Tom McCave, VP of Performance Marketing at The Economist, shared why and how the Economist is investing in their branding.  

3. What Is the Essence of Journalism, Today and Tomorrow? 

All this talk of AI coming for virtually every aspect of creation is raising some big, existential questions. If machines can now do the things we once thought only humans could, what’s left for us? More specifically: what’s left for journalism? 

Several media leaders tried to define what journalism is still for in a world increasingly flooded with AI-generated noise. 

Julia Angwin, Founder of Proof News, got straight to the heart of it: “Journalism’s essence is holding power to account.” Not informing, not entertaining—holding power to account. It’s an active role, not a passive one, and definitely not something you want to leave to a language model. 

Marty Baron, former Executive Editor of The Washington Post, took that idea and widened the lens. For him, journalism is about giving people “truthful information” so they can make informed decisions. It’s public service.  

Meera Selva, CEO of Interviews Europe, added an emotional dimension. She described journalism as “deep storytelling, embedded in human culture”. It’s not just about the facts. It’s about meaning, memory, and identity—things that matter because they’re lived, not generated. 

Conclusion: Meaning Still Has to Come from Somewhere 

This year’s WAN-IFRA Congress made one thing clear: AI is no longer a distant experiment.  

We heard how AI can accelerate production, summarize content, and help uncover hidden stories. We also heard how it’s changing how readers find information, pushing publishers to double down on brand, voice, and trust. 

But the most powerful insight wasn’t technical. It was human. In a world where machines can mimic almost anything, journalism’s value lies in knowing what matters, asking why it matters, and telling stories that actually mean something. 

AI can write the sentence, but journalism still knows why it needs to be written.